The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological theories of race at the millennium
by Joseph Graves, Rutgers, $28, ISBN 081352847X
IN 1999, the states of Kansas, Kentucky and New Mexico removed any explicit
reference to evolution from their school science curricula. Joseph Graves, an
evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, thinks this kind of
action will promote racism in the US. Controversially, he suggests that it will
foster horrific tragedies such as the Columbine and Granada Hills school
shootings in which teenagers killed their classmates. Many of their victims were
from ethnic minorities.
Graves argues that “race and racism were…
